Tights and ripped jeans are not the only two options for producing Shakespeare.
Baroque and LifeTeen are not the only two types of liturgical styles.

Thank you, Adam: I have long bemoaned the Rad-Trad-fetishists who insist only on Baroque-style chasubles and lotsa lace (a seminarian I know, in the FSSP, no less, calls those things 'litengerie') as a prerequisite for the validity of the Mass.

Now, having said that, there are some places where beautiful fiddlebacks and lace surplices really do work, such as the uber-Barok St. Martin's Abbey (Abtei Weingarten) in Ravensburg (Germany). However, if one is celebrating the traditional Mass in, say, the Basilica of St-Denis in Paris, not only would such things be completely anachronistic historically (which in the long run, really doesn't matter), but they would be a very jarring contrast to the architecture of that early Gothic building.

Apart from that, I think that you have given all involved in liturgical renewal (reform, revivification) much food for thought, and I echo Julie's comment above. Now, the next phase: we have, more or less, diagnosed a/the problem; what is the solution? If, indeed, there is one. In other words, without trying to dig up the past in an archaeological way, how should we implement Adam's four (simultaneous) ways of attacking the problem: Looking in, out, up, and down?

There are also personality types: people who thrive on mastery of rules-based systems will tend to alienate people who do not. And vice-versa.

BTW - I think (to the extent I know about what they're doing) that Fr. Smith's program at Prince of Peace in South Carolina is the sort of thing I mean about providing a community-based context for liturgy.

And the stuff @JulieColl is always talking about is the sort of thing I mean when I talk about appropriate adaptations that contribute to the subjective experience of the congregation.

Adam, Julie, others...

This past Thursday (Jan 22nd) we managed a Solemn High Votive Mass for the Forgiveness of Sins, to make reparation for the public crime of abortion. Most of those in the congregation, I suspect, don't frequent the EF. Predicting this, however, allowed me to prepare a booklet which contained the proper (words only), the ordinary (Mass XVII), Te Deum and Parce Domine. In the notes at the front I pointed out that one of the differences between this celebration of the Mass and what the congregation counted as familiar was this: no one will tell you when to sing, or invite you to sing, but you are welcome to sing if you like.


Stage managing by microphone has absolutely got to go from all celebrations of the liturgy.

"We can neither translate everything into some contemporary idiom, nor can we simply drop an ancient liturgy into the midst of modern people." Adam really nails it here in his essay. While the former approach "dumbs down" the liturgy too much for the sake of the people, the latter tends to ignore the needs of the people entirely.

And this illustrates very well the impasse at which Catholic liturgists have arrived. Neither form of the Roman Rite as it is commonly celebrated is thriving. I recently read in a history of the Liturgical Movement that in the eighteenth century the liturgy had at that time also "ceased to be a vital force in Catholicism."

The impetus for the Liturgical Movement came from a desire to reignite a fervor for the liturgy and to unite the faithful with the priest in the celebration of the Mass. That desire was crystallized by Pope St. Pius X's call to restore chant to the people in Tra le sollecitudini: that they be "taught to say or sing in Latin those parts of the Mass that pertain to them."

That was the essence of the original Liturgical Movement (before it was derailed); that was the repeated call of the preconciliar popes and that was the sentiment enshrined in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Has that dream of the original LIturgical Movement ever been realized? What will happen when it is? Cardinal Ratzinger believed that at that fateful moment when "the essential criteria" of Sacrosanctum Concilium are observed, including the application of those criteria to the EF, this is what will happen:

"The moment when this liturgy truly touches the faithful with its beauty and its richness, THEN IT WILL BE LOVED, then it will no longer be irreconcilably opposed to the new Liturgy, providing that these criteria are indeed applied as the Council wished.

"Different spiritual and theological emphases will certainly continue to exist, but there will no longer be two contradictory ways of being a Christian; there will instead be that richness which pertains to the same single Catholic faith."

So, there it is, the winning liturgical formula as outlined by Cardinal Ratzinger on the 10th anniversay of Ecclesia Dei: the Mass, in both forms of the Roman Rite celebrated 1) with the people singing or saying in Latin those parts of the Mass pertaining to them, 2) celebrated "in community with the active participation of the faithful" with 3) responses and acclamations by the people as well as appropriate actions, gestures, postures and periods of silence.

Salieri, it sounds like you naturally took to heart this basic principle which Louis Bouyer attributed to the work of Dom Gueranger:

"That we must not try to provide an artificial congregation to take part in an antiquarian Liturgy, but rather to prepare the actual congregations of the Church today to take part in the truly traditional Liturgy rightly understood."

(From Dom Alcuin Reid's introduction to Dom Beauduin's Liturgy, the Life of the Church)

I've been trying to think of more of what I mean about CONTEXT, because I'm not sure I've expressed what I am getting at in full.

I've been trying to wrap my head around a concept that showed up in art and theatre in the 20th century: "Strange making." This notion had a profound effect on my theatre work (back when I did that sort of thing), and it has recently started showing up in my readings of theology and liturgy. Pickstock and Girard both touch on it, as do a number of other thinkers.

The key idea in artistic "strange making" is a process by which something usual, normal, or familiar is highlighted in a way the is startling and makes some deeper truth known. The typical poetic explanation of this is:

"Make the familiar strange, so as to make the strange familiar."

[I wrote the following all at once this morning, with not much thinking through the larger theological consequences, so if anything here is a direct path into heresy, I trust you all will simply correct my thinking.]

This is precisely what happens in liturgy. We take familiar elements --- bread, wine, water --- and do something unusual with them. We make them strange to us, take them far away from our usual experience. When they come back to us, they bring an experience of God. They make God, who is strange to us, familiar.

There is a mirror of John's narrative of the descent and ascent of Christ. In John, the Divine life comes to us and then returns. In sacraments, elements of our human life are offered up to God and then returned to us. Sacraments are our response to the Incarnation, and they accomplish the same goal: bridging the gap between Heaven and Earth, reconciling God and Humanity.

Consequences:

- As the sacramental elements become less familiar to us, their power in this regard decreases. This is why no one understands anointing anymore (and possibly contributes to our confusion over Confirmation). The breakdown of the family meal and the rise of fast-food culture are having the same effect on Eucharist.

- Bypassing this structure does not work. We cannot make the strange familiar by first making the familiar more familiar. This is the root of the failure of contemporary worship and casual liturgy.


The unfamiliarity of the basic human elements of the sacraments is a major cause of the lack of context.

Restoring a fuller understanding of community and family, and of food itself, is a critical part of restoring the context in which the Eucharistic liturgy can communicate effectively to us.


----

Thoughts?

I wrote the following all at once this morning, with not much thinking through the larger theological consequences, so if anything here is a direct path into heresy, I trust you all will simply correct my thinking.

#thingsneversaidbyrichardmcbrien

Our cultural context treats food as cheap and disposable. Surely that affects how people perceive the Eucharist.

This is a good point -- Many old[er] Polish people (those whose parents came from the Old Country) have often told me that if a piece of bread fell on the floor they would immediately pick it up and kiss it, because something as precious as the food that God has given us to sustain us should not be treated lightly - they wouldn't have dared to pass the Host around like as was seen at the Mega-Mass in Manila, because they wouldn't have dared to pass the bread around their dining table like was seen in Manila.

Carl Wolk responds.

I agree with most everything he says. But he seems to disagree with me.

I think I'm perhaps not making myself clear.

Germane: http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/01/balance-instead-of-harmony-guest.html

Part II is not yet published.